Why would anyone want to do this!?

Rainbow at Oil Creek. Photo by Jeremy Lock/Legion Photo

 I had the opportunity this week to speak with a reporter doing a story about the Oil Creek 100. He is interviewing several runners from all levels running Saturday. This was his last question:

Last, but not least, what the heck is wrong with you?! Why would anyone want to do this to themselves?

I have thought about this question a lot. It resounds like a drum especially during difficult runs. I did my best to answer the question.  After giving it much more thought and doing my best to honestly and openly answer it this is the best I can do.This is why I enjoy running 100 miles ... or longer.

 During every long run I experience an extreme feeling of spiritual awareness. Running 100 miles, and training for a run that long, makes me feel closer to God. Sometimes the experience is indescribable. The Oil Creek 100 last year defined me. It wasn't just the race itself. It was dreaming of completing it, the long runs preparing for it, the fears and doubts I had to face to overcome it, and finally crossing the finish line and hugging my wife who helped me so much through the journey. It was knowing in that moment that my life would never be the same. Ultimately, the entire experience was relationship building with God because I let it slip away. I became comfortable in my life and forgot what it felt like to know God as a friend. He had become a thought and not a relationship. He had become a big question mark and sadly something or someone to point a finger at for all the wars, sadness and misery in the world. He was no longer a friend. He was just a word and that word was religion. I can remember the EXACT moment I turned away from God. I was at Ground Zero about a month after 9/11. I was there for four months day and night after the towers fell. I was assigned there for my job. It wasn't the horrific things I saw there that changed me. I saw hope and love there also. It was my fellow Christians handing out pamphlets at the gates to the firemen going to work to find their friends in the rubble. The Christians would scream from the gate "If you died today would you go to heaven or hell?" It broke my heart. Crushed my spirit and destroyed my faith. I began to question every experience I had with God. And I began to slip away. Since that day, I can count on one hand how many times I have stepped in a church.  I don't know when it happened exactly but while running I began thinking about God. Ironically, I began running because I developed breathing problems from my time at Ground Zero. A pulmonary test showed that my air intake was the same as a 96 year old person. So I began running. And I began remembering. On my runs I thought about God.  I was brought back to a time in my life when I put all of myself into the words of God that say this - If you seek Me with all your heart and all your soul then you will find Me.  So I decided to run 100 miles. I decided that I wanted to seek again and there was something crazy romantic and beautiful to me about looking for God while trying to achieve something that I did not feel was possible. The rest of the story, well like I said, defines me. These are the words from the note section of my phone that I wrote lying in bed before falling asleep after finishing Oil Creek last year:

Remember. Over time, you begin to question faith. You forget this. Here, now. God is real, there is no question. He showed you today. Remember.
What happened today was about trust. God revealed himself. There is no doubt. 100 percent I believe. God was with me today. I am His.
I must remember.

The words Oil Creek will always remind me of what it feels like to be a kid again. Running, dreaming and dancing on trails with tears in my eyes and my arms in the air.  Care free and happy. Simply spending time with my friend.

Come Saturday. We run.